And on the subject of signings, please read and take note of the formal instructions; signings take an awful lot out of the hand and decades of signings have made my hand rather weak. However, it’s still strong enough to pick up a glass.
I really am looking forward to the convention and that’s no lie.
Best wishes,
Terry Pratchett
Wiltshire, U.K.
February 2011
STRAIGHT FROM THE HEART, VIA THE GROIN
Speech given at Noreascon 2004, WorldCon
I had a whole speech prepared on my computer, but in the event it wouldn’t open, so this is what I was able to recall from memory. The main thing in speeches is to get that first laugh in, and once you’ve got it, you have the audience in the hollow of your hand.
My name is Terry Pratchett. If this comes as a surprise to you, you have a little bit of time left in which to leave.
Some six months ago I wrote a worthy and learned treatise to deliver to you today. However, some events eventuated in the meantime. So, having got you all here, I’m going to tell you about my operation. It turned out that I had very high blood pressure, so for three months I had high blood pressure and pills that weren’t doing any good, which made my blood pressure go up higher. Then for three months I had low blood pressure and pills that did work, but they were the maximum-strength betablockers which are, brothers and sisters, the Devil’s face flannel. It was like having a hot towel on my brain.
And then they got it all sorted out, and they found that since I had no history of heart disease in my family, a low cholesterol level, didn’t smoke, didn’t drink strong drink—much—wasn’t overweight, and exercised regularly, of course I had heart disease. I complained about this and they said, “Tough luck, even plastic people get struck by lightning.” They weighed my wallet and found it was far too heavy for a man of my age and off I went for an angiogram, where they look at your heart via your groin. Now, the heart and groin are sometimes linked in other ways, but it did seem to me they were taking the long route. They give you a little something which makes you a wee bit sleepy and, hey, you are allowed to watch the operation on television.
They said, “Is there any particular music you would like to listen to?” And I said “Well, I hadn’t thought about it, really. Er … you got some Jim Steinman?” And they said “Sure,” put on Bat Out of Hell, and got on with the job. I was watching what they were doing and there was my heart on the screen, and I realized I was nodding off and I thought, “But this is so cool! The last thing I’m seeing is my heart, still beating!”
Then I had to have the stents put in. You know, these things that collapse. You’ve probably been following the various legal cases if you have any heart problems, as I have, but mine apparently are okay. And that’s rather a more serious operation. Beforehand, you go and talk to the surgeon and he explains, “There’s nothing to worry about, it’s quite simple, you will be out next day, oh, by the way will you sign this document?”
“Oh yes, what’s this document for?”
“That enables us to take you away and give you full-on open heart surgery if necessary. By the way, my son really likes your books.”
I said, “If you would like your son to continue to be happy, may I advise some caution tomorrow?”
And again I was wheeled into the surgery and gently slid into a happy state. Woke up in my room, God knows how many hours later, with a nurse pressing hard on my groin. What can a man say? “Where were you when I was eighteen?” In fact I settled for: “What happened? Did it all work? Did the stents go in?”
“Yes, they’ve gone in fine, no problems,” she said, “but we had to stop you bleeding from the artery.”
And the thing about bleeding from the artery, well … bleeding from the vein, you get drops of blood. Bleeding from an artery, the ceiling goes red. Then in comes the surgeon and said, “It’s fine, it’s fine, everything is fine.” But there was just a hint of not-quite-fine in his voice, so I said, “So, it all went well, did it?” in a meaningful sort of way, to which he replied, “Well, there were some fun and games.”
I said, “How long was I on the slab?” And he said, “Oh, about an hour and a half, and please stop calling it a slab.” I said, “Fun and games, I take it, is a medical term meaning ‘You nearly died’?”
He said, “Well you reacted rather badly to the dye which is used to illuminate the heart, but we hit you up with —— [something I can’t remember, but it sounded like nitroglycerine] and everything was … fine.” Apparently some part of my brain shuts my arteries down when I’m stressed. How my bloodline managed to survive five million years of evolution with this amazing trait, we shall never know, but they changed the medication as a result and I feel, well, fine.
Then the surgeon said: “What we don’t understand is why you kept on shouting about sandwiches. You kept trying to sit up on the operating table, which is, as I believe I have told you several times, not the slab, saying ‘There he is—with sandwiches!’ ”
And I said, “Yes, I remember that, there was a man—and he had sandwiches! He had a sort of tray and he was standing in the corner!” And the doctor said, “What kind were they?” And I said, “I don’t know! You wouldn’t let me get near! And sometimes there was this big nose looming in front of me and something like the voice of God saying THERE ARE NOOOOOO SANDWICHES …”
He said, “Yes, that was probably me.”
So that’s it, brothers and sisters. I’d have loved to find out if they were going to be cucumber with the crusts cut off. That means you’re going to go to hell. In England, if they are Branston Pickle and cheese that means you are on the way to heaven. But, alas, it was only a near sandwich experience and I survived. But it is nice to know that wherever you are going to go, you are going to get something to eat on the way.
However, when this happens to a man, he starts to think, and asks the questions that have been bugging him for some time, like “What’s it all about then, when you get right down to it?” and “Is it really too late to get a Porsche?”
But mostly, “What’s it all about then really when you get down to it?” And you know, I just don’t know. But I’m pretty sure that you should not head towards the sandwiches.
Two weeks ago we had a Discworld convention in the U.K. A major one is held every two years. Lots of Americans came to it this time. You can tell the Americans, they were the ones that spent a lot of time in the bar singing songs like “Roll Me Over in the Clover.” They had been let out of California, where you are not even allowed to think songs like that.